NEW YORK -- Love literature? Enjoy romance? "Vita & Virginia" offers a classy evening with two literary ladies in love.

The great British novelist Virginia Woolf and her lesser-known yet eminent compatriot Vita Sackville-West shared an intimate friendship for more than 20 years, during which time they exchanged numerous letters.

Their seriously charming correspondence was elegantly adapted into a two-character play by actress-writer Eileen Atkins, who depicted Woolf opposite Vanessa Redgrave's Sackville-West in a 1994 off-Broadway production.

"Vita & Virginia" now returns for a series of Monday-only performances through April 28 at the Zipper Factory Theater.

Presented by the No Frills Company, which favors works with substantive roles for women -- especially artists over the age of 40 -- the show that opened yesterday actually is more of a staged reading than a full-out production, yet the epistolary material lends itself nicely to such an occasion.

Making this event all the nicer are graceful performances by Patricia Elliott as Sackville-West and Kathleen Chalfant as Woolf.

Best known as the character Renee Buchanan in the daytime drama "One Life to Live," Elliott has splendid stage credits, beginning with her Tony-winning turn in the original "A Little Night Music." Chalfant won her awards as the dying John Donne scholar in "Wit" and has created numerous roles, such as the Mormon mom in "Angels in America."

Elliott and Chalfant flesh out their contrasting characters beautifully.

The blue-blooded Sackville-West enjoyed a devoted but open marriage to the bisexual diplomat and author Harold Nicolson. In 1922, she met Woolf, a leading light of London's Bloomsbury literary group. Woolf was married, too, but that fact did not prevent Sackville-West from wooing her. Their affair lasted through most of the 1920s and they remained friends until Woolf's death in 1941.

Both writers obviously enjoyed ravishing each other with words. Their letters about life and literature are a treat for the ear. They also reveal their natures: the worldly, self-involved Sackville-West suggests a platinum butterfly fluttering around Woolf's subtle, evasive, mood-swinging genius.

Quietly dressed in ankle-length gray wool with a long cardigan, Chalfant gives Woolf a mischievously fey, teasing manner and a voice as smoky as her cropped hair. Hands often clasped above her heart, Chalfant expresses Woolf's frequent changes in mood deeply through eloquent body language and vocal vibrancy.

Both performers appear before music stands holding their scripts, although they rarely refer to them. United by a Turkish carpet, the writers' separate worlds differ visually. Woolf's chair is modernist, set off by an artsy bit of batik, while Sackville-West's side is conservatively furnished.

Under director Pamela Berlin's guidance, Elliott and Chalfant believably interact with warm sensitivity -- and never once touch each other, implying the long distances that often kept them apart physically, if not emotionally.